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From: Sandie Geddes
Date: 13 Sep 1999
Time: 10:03:51
Remote Name: 194.168.105.3
The short answer is 'No'. However, St Mary, as the mother of Christ, was one of, if not the, most popular saint of the mediaeval church, the subject of a Europe-wide cult of the Virgin. As the early Church Fathers tended to adopt/adapt many pagan elements it is probable that St Mary is the Christian manifestation of pagan fertility goddesses - the Egyptian Isis, the Greek Artemis 'universal mother', etc. A recent work (whose title escapes me unfortunately) argues that goddess worship is a common element of oral cultures whereas veneration of the male grows with written cultures - reflecting the different hemispheres of the brain: left female, intuitive, oral; right, male, loigical, written. After the Reformation many churches were rededicated; the parish church of St Andrew in Mildenhall, for example, was formerly St Mary's.